As bizarre as it may sound, I have found that buying only pre-packaged food for a few weeks really helps people get a ballpark feel for what 1900 calories (or w

As bizarre as it may sound, I have found that buying only pre-packaged food for a few weeks really helps people get a ballpark feel for what 1900 calories (or whatever) looks/feels like. Because the calories on packaged food exist by law (even if they aren't always completely accurate), it's a really easy way learn about it. After that people can develop some intuition (like, "I only ate a few mouthfuls of cheese. How many calories could that be?" or "It's just trail mix. It's healthy. Peanuts and raisins. Like 0 calories!" or "I just have a single bran muffin and a coffee for breakfast. It's not even a meal" or... well you get the idea).